Paradise Burning (The Virtagwalla Series Book 2) (7 page)

12

Hampton Ray loved his wife very much. Whitley Ray was born and raised in Manhattan, and loved the city’s fast paced nature. Her father died very early in her childhood. Leaving her mother and her rather wealthy after his passing, her childhood was one that was blessed and relatively pain free. Her mother encouraged her to go into nursing because she noticed early on her that her daughter had a passion for helping people. Three months after Whitley’s graduation from New York University, her mother died of a massive heart attack. The worst part about it was that Whitley was on the phone with her when it happened. Sitting in traffic across town, she could do nothing but hang up on her mother after saying her last goodbyes, in an attempt to alert an ambulance to the house. By the time they had arrived her mother had already passed. Being left with no siblings or living relative she felt exceptionally alone in the world for the first time in her life. That was until that fateful day in the subway station when she was robbed and inadvertently fell in love with the man she would one day marry. With Hampton’s encouragement and her own drive to ensure no one else’s mother had to die like her mother did, she became an expert cardiac nurse.

              Moving to Virtagwalla, was to her one of the best decisions the two of them had ever made. She instantly fell in love with the island, Hampton’s family, and the people of the small pacific nation. Gaining a position at the world famous Virtagwallan General Hospital in downtown Ponchertrain, the well moneyed couple settled in a sprawling home on the beach in Settlerstown not too far from Hampton’s buddy Xavier.

              Although both of them worked extraneous hours, they still seemed to find time with each other. This particular night Hampton had gone out of his way to set up a romantic evening. He came home early from work, lit candles, made dinner, and put together a fresh peach cobbler, Whitley’s favorite dessert. They dined by candlelight just talking about the exciting things they were doing. After snuggling and watching one of their favorite movies they found themselves in the bedroom. Intimacy was never a problem for the young couple. They had been, since their second month of being in Virtagwalla, trying to have a baby. Whitley and Hampton equally wanted to start a family.

              Hampton and Whitley lay next to each other in deep embrace. The sweat on Hampton’s naked body was slowly evaporating after their wild romp across their king bed. He gazed at his beautiful wife and gently stroked her hair. Not a single care or moment of stress crossed his mind. He didn’t want that moment to end. The world was at peace for him and his darling wife.

              When all of a sudden it hit him. Right there, laying in bed drench in sweat, it came to him. He sat up, startling Whitley. “Is everything alright?” she asked grabbing his shoulder lightly.

              “Oh my god I just remembered where I knew that name Aurum from?” he said sliding out from under the covers.

              Whitley sat up a little, “Excuse me? Well mister you are forgetting something!”

              He turned to her, smiled and kissed her, “I’m sorry honey I will be right back. And when I get back I will show you what a real man can do. But I need to call Xavier.” Hampton slid his glasses on, and ran towards the door. Down the hallway and into his office he found his cell phone. Checking the time he dialed Xavier.

              The phone of Rove’s bedside table began to rattle and light up. Waking up the slumbering President he grabbed his phone. Getting kicked in the back by Rachel, he slid out from his bed and stumbled into his study. Answering the phone, “Ray do you realize it is 1:30 in the morning! We better be getting invaded!”

              “Xavier I just remembered where we’ve heard the name Aurum before,” Ray said shuffling through some papers on his desk.

              “Did it come to you in a dream?” Rove laughed. Pausing, “Please don’t tell me you are talking to me nude right now, most likely from your office.”

              Standing up, “Wow that is actually kind of weird because I am.”

              “Gross. I told you, you are required to have pants on when you want to talk to the President of Virtagwalla, Ray,” he laughed. “I’ll give you a pass on this oversight, but never again. Now, where have you heard it before?”

              “We’ve both heard it. I know you have because I told you about it,” Ray said finding the folder he was looking for, and pulling out some papers. “Xavier do you remember a couple months ago I got coffee with Chen Boggiano, and you wanted me to do some digging on the topic of the UV’s expansion into Villaggio?”

              “Yes of course. This is the same lunch that you promised we would give that student body president an internship or something,” Rove said pinching his nose between his eyes attempting to remember the exact conversation.

              “Right that one. Which by the way I had him diverted and now he is shadowing Jacqueline Sensado. I’m sure you don’t mind,” Ray said finding the exact sheet of paper.  “Ok here we go. The company that bought the land from the University at that ghastly-reduced price was the Aurum Properties Holding Corporation, right? But get this, the company that “swapped” the land for the University’s shares in VirtGold was also Aurum, but this time it was the Aurum International Exchange Corporation.”

              “Interesting that they are both Aurum,” Xavier said finding it hard to connect the dots. “Are they connected?”

              “I’m not sure,” Hampton said, “Both companies have served as challenges to track down. They seem like phantoms or something. A week back or so, I made some calls to my old firm and asked a handful of my old buddies to do some research,” turning on a light and pulling out another folder Hampton explained, “Ok they are both privately held corporations, chartered through the United States. Aurum International is chartered through Hawaii, while Aurum Properties is held through the state of Wyoming. Sounds weird. Since they are private they don’t have to disclose their investors, and neither of their boards chairmen or members are the same in any way. As far as I can tell at least right now,” He was interrupted.

              “Standing nude in your home office that is,” Rove spat mockingly.

              “Right, standing naked here, I deduced that these two corporations are in fact different. They just share the name Aurum.”

              “That is interesting,” Rove said sitting down.

              Standing back up, looking out the window, “You know what Mr. President, I don’t feel right about this. I feel like this just too close to be a coincidence.”

              “There is no such thing as a coincidence Hampton, merely disguised happen stance,” Rove said crossing his arms.

              “My thoughts exactly. Ok I am going to get back to bed. You have a good night Ms. President,” Hampton said closing the folder.

              “You too. And thank you. I will see you in, ugh, a couple hours,” and with that Xavier hung up the phone. He sat in his office pondering the new developments to him for several hours. After nearly dozing off, he heard his alarm trumpeting in his bedroom. Followed closely by his wife screaming for him to come turn it off.

13

              The Virtagwalla Gold Depository Corporation was nationalized by Parliamentary action, and placed under the control of the National Government, through the Ministry of Finance, after Virtagwalla was granted its independence from the United States. VirtGold, as the locals tended to refer to it, was one of the oldest corporations in existence on the island. Its purpose was to oversee the mining of the precious materials from underneath the island’s rough exterior. Gold was discovered in Virtagwalla shortly after the turn of the nineteenth century, and much of the island’s development was spurred by it. The eventual construction of Ponchertrain was brought on by the desire to house the international prospectors in a safer place than in the jungle.  After many horrible accidents due to unsafe mining techniques, the United State’s navy Provisional Territory Government established that only registered corporations could actively mine on the island of Virtagwalla. Originally there were nearly a dozen corporations mining. However once the United States ceded authority to the people of Virtagwalla, the public voted to consolidate all the mining companies into one, and by statute owned by the government. Overtime the ownership model of the corporation began to vary, and eventually stock was issued for the Virtagwalla Gold Depository Corporation. However, by law, 51% of VirtGold’s shares must be held by the Ministry of Finance. The other 49% is management by the corporation, and sold on the Virtagwallan Stock Exchange. The profits of the corporation are distributed in that manor as well. 

              Quarterly the Board of Director’s gathered to discuss the financial health of the corporation. They met on the 60
th
floor of the VirtGold Tower in downtown Ponchertrain. The edifice was simply magnificent - opulence to the max. The front doors were solid gold. Even the buttons in the elevator were made of gold. Forbes magazine named it the priciest world headquarters for a corporation on earth when it was completed. The expansive green marble desk that lines the front of the building, and the enormous gold medallion inlaid into the wall above it with the National Seal of Virtagwalla, and the smaller silver medallion laid in next to it with the seal of the Virtagwallan Gold Depository Corporation caused for a rather grandiose entrance.  Even the boardroom was sumptuous, with each board member’s spot at the table inlaid with a slab of 24-karat gold.

              Minister Sensado was always captivated at how stunning the building was. All the gold tended to make her queasy, but she enjoyed the surprising little pop ups every once in a while. However when she showed up with Prime Minister Zhang to the quarterly business meeting she was anything but blown away. In fact she was so distracted she barely was able to remember to grab her papers from the office, or her phone from her purse.  The boardroom was filling up rather quickly as the most important businessmen and politicians filed in. Prime Minister Zhang sat reading a file of papers quietly as the rest of the room greeted each other and went about preparing for their long meeting. Sensado sat nervously. She was preparing in her mind the questions she was going to ask, and the information she was going to be collecting while she was present. She looked towards the door, and found, interestingly, an unexpected woman walking in.

              Growling the Prime Minister noticed her as well, “What is she doing here?” he asked Sensado as she gathered her papers.

              Shaking her head, “I don’t know sir. Maybe she is a board member too.”

              Rolling his eyes, “Ah yes, Chen Boggiano, only the trashiest reporter in town, as a member of the Board of Directors for VirtGold. Probably another one of Challet’s brilliant of moves.”

              Sensado watched as Boggiano took her seat across the table and down a couple seats from Sensado and the Prime Minister. A couple moments later the Chairman of the Board, Doug Challet, walked into the room.

              “Take your seats, take your seats, we will be starting in just a few moments,” Challet said finding his spot near the front of the room. He stood after everyone had settled into their seats, and began, “Good Morning Ladies and Gentlemen of the Board, and welcome to the third quarter board meeting for the Virtagwalla Gold Depository Corporation. I officially call this meeting to order at 9:02 am. Quarterly reports have been distributed to you in the form of the usual binder and should be sitting in front of you if you haven’t discovered this already,” he held up an example of the binders being distributed. “I know I had them sent out in advanced. Are there any questions before we begin?”

              Prime Minister Zhang lazily threw his hand into the air. Challet sighed and said, “Yes Prime Minister, what can I help you with?”

              Zhang scowled as he sat up straight, “Yes, Mr. Chairman, I apologize for being rude, but what is the meaning of Ms. Boggiano’s attendance at this meeting? Is she a member of this board, and I just simply didn’t realize?”

              Challet cracked a smile, “Actually Mr. Zhang she is not a member of this board. But we do have a major stockholder who requested they have a representative simply come and witness the happenings of this board meeting. Is that alright with you?”

              Zhang’s eyes turned red with fury, “And who is this investor that would make such outlandish demands?”

              Challet bit his lip, “I am sorry Mr. Prime Minister but as you know I am not permitted to divulge that information. They asked for me to keep their identity anonymous and thus is what I plan on doing,” he gleaned at Zhang, “Now, Mr. Prime Minister is there anything I can help you with that concerns the contents of this binder? If not, I wish to proceed.”

              Sensado put her head forward pinching her nose. She had only met with Challet once, and that was shortly after being appointed to the position of Minister of Finance. Challet was a former Minister of Finance and wanted to impart some of his wisdom on the new minister. As the new Chairman of VirtGold he knew he would be working with Sensado quite a bit over her term. She respected him greatly for his work to sustain the healthy economy and balance out the insane President that predated Rove.

              Shaking his head, “No Mr. Chairman I will reserve the rest of my inquiries for other matters.”

              Challet smiled his typical politician smile, “Very well then, let’s get started.”

              Over the next four hours, the chairman raked over the recent activities of VirtGold, the company’s most recent marketing campaign, and their mission statement, which was currently undergoing an overhaul and subsequent face lift. Not many of the Board members seemed intently interested in what was going on. After their delicious lunch, the board broke up into the separate committees. Sensado had been assigned to the finance committee for obvious reasons. Luckily Zhang, who also sat on the finance committee, had at the last minute decided to skip and go to the strategic planning committee meeting. Pulling up a seat next to Chen Boggiano, Sensado reached out her hand.

              “Ms. Boggiano how are you this afternoon?” Jacqueline smiled shaking the woman’s hand.

              Standing, “Minister Sensado I am doing very well actually, thank you for asking.”

              Pulling out the chair, “Oh I am sure you are finding this to be simply the most interesting day you’ve had?” she laughed setting her papers down.

              “Actually I do find this stuff interesting,” Chen said sitting back down, “I did my undergraduate work in business and journalism. I figured if this whole news reporting thing didn’t pan out I could always get a good old desk job,” she softly giggled as she watch Sensado take a swig from her water bottle and find her seat.

              “Wow I didn’t know that,” Sensado communicated, “I apologize for being presumptuous.”

              “It’s quite alright,” she said turning as Challet walked in the room. Sitting down next to Sensado, the three of them chatted briefly before the Chairman of the Finance Committee, the Chief Financial Officer of VirtGold, Adrianna Arnold, came into the room. Adrianna was a shrewd businesswoman and a genius in corporate finances. Sensado had always taken herself as a whiz when it came to finances, but when she attempted to compare herself to Adrianna she felt simply inadequate.

              “I hope all of you have spent some time combing over these statements,” Adrianna said clicking a button on the remote she pulled from her pocket causing the windows to darken, and screens to fall from the ceiling on every wall of the room. Projected on to the screens were digital slides depicting different pieces of the balance sheet, incomes statement, and most importantly the cash flow statement. Sensado had in fact walked over the documents a variety of times in order to get a better idea of what they were looking at.

              After a half an hour, Adrianna had gone through all the documents, and was beginning to summarize, “As you can see there are many things facing VirtGold as significant challenges in the future. Besides our collapsing cash flow and overwhelming liabilities, we must also deal with a massive reevaluation to the long-term asset section of our balance sheet. After reevaluating some of our studies of the goldfield prospects we found that they will be depleted far sooner than we originally thought. Thus the overall value of those fields, and potential for more gold in the future had to be significantly decreased. We are writing down just short of a half a trillion dollars in reevaluation.”

              Sensado threw her hand up, “Ms. Arnold, so are you telling us that for years this company has been over estimating the amount of gold in those minds by nearly a 500 billion dollars?”

              Shaking her head, “Yes Minister I am,” she clicked her button and the screens flipped to show a map of the entire mine network, “This graphic, here, shows all the mines and caves being currently worked on by the corporation,” she clicked the button, “Up until this past year these were the sites that we presumed had more gold. You see many of these mine shafts have this blue shading around it. These were, what we assumed, untapped veins of gold,” she clicked it again and another picture flashed up, “If you remember at our last board meeting, Prime Minister Zhang demanded a new scan to give us a better idea, and more accurate idea of where the true future veins could be. The results of that study are on the screen now. You will notice there is significantly less future gold than we originally thought.”

              Sensado stood up and moved towards a chart, she then turned, “Ms. Chairwoman I am sorry for being such a pain, but could you please flip back to you last chart?”

              “Certainly,” the slide flipped back, and then Sensado had her flip back. After doing this a couple times, Sensado looked around to find most of the board members to be yawning or losing attention. She moved away from the screen, and then stopped, and asked, “Madame Chairwoman, how much knowledge do you have of these mines?”

              “I have quite a bit, as does Mr. Abbet our Chief Operating Officer,” Arnold said pointing to a balding man at the table.

              “Great, can you tell me where this mine shaft is? In the old study there seemed to be at least a half trillion dollars worth of gold still in this whole new shaft? And in the new one, there is nothing. Its as if it the vein, simply just disappeared.”

              The balding man stood up eyeing Arnold, “If the Chairwoman permits me to speak I will attempt to explain?” Arnold gave him an icy stare, and he seemed to understand why. Nodding he finished standing, and removed a laser pointer. Clearing his throat he began, “That is what we call Winter’s shaft. It is actually the closest mine we have to Ponchertrain, believe it or not. To give you a better idea location wise it is up Highway 100, and just before you get to Everett Pass it is on the south side of 100. It is located under Mount Sallis, and is probably only about two or three miles into the Mounts. The problem we ran into with that shaft is that it comes exceptionally close to the edge of the island, and there was some concern with the underwater cliff face’s integrity if we continued to drill there. Furthermore the newer study revealed no real gold potential there anyways.”

              Arnold piped up, “Let me assure you Minister I asked the exact same questions.”

              Biting her lip, Sensado headed back to her seat, “Thank you Ms. Arnold and Mr. Abbet, I appreciate the clarity.”

              Chen Boggiano raised her hand. Arnold looked at her, “I am sorry Ms. Boggiano but you are here on observer status only. You are not permitted to make comment.”

“No, no, no I don’t want to make a comment, I am looking for a bit of information,” Chen chirped forward.

              Rolling her eyes, “Fine Ms. Boggiano, what can I help you with?”

              “Is there anyway I can get a copy of this study’s findings?”

              Mauling it over in her head, “These studies are not public documents. I am sorry.”

              “Very well,” she thought for a moment, “What if I sign a confidentiality agreement and only share it with the party that I represent. I think this is something my client would be interested in seeing.”

              Sighing, “Fine, I guess that can be done. Talk to me after this meeting,” Arnold continued after a moment, “Furthermore, we are looking at some potential serious problems with our cash flow. As I mentioned earlier the amount of gold being harvest has declined significantly in recent months, and to make things worse the market for gold has slowed dramatically. We have found it necessary to dip into our strategic funds in order to continue our operations. Unless the gold market picks back up, and our output lifts we could in for some potentially threatening problems.”